3 Reasons I Love Milwaukee: Michael Perry

We asked writer and March 2017 issue contributor Michael Perry to share with us the reasons he loves Milwaukee.

From Bradford Beach and the Harley-Davidson Museum to Kopp’s Frozen Custard and the Milwaukee County Zoo… there are a lot of reasons to love Milwaukee! Here are Michael Perry’s:

Milwaukee has always been a healthy corrective to my own creeping provincialism. When I leave my back forty up north and travel to or through Milwaukee, I am reminded that there is so much more to this state than cows, cheese, and deer huntin’.

1. The big staircase in the Shops of Grand Avenue. I remember descending past the Plankinton statue to do book tour interviews on WUWM and thinking, they don’t have things like this where I come from.

2. Daniel Goldin of Boswell Book Company. He is a positive force of nature for low-key hustlers like me. I tour all over the country and can tell you that his store and the events he holds there are an author’s and reader’s dream. Plus he once re-opened his store for me after a very long day so I could search for car keys I thought were lost but were in fact upon my person.

3. Will Allen of Growing Power. We have never met, but I have followed his work from afar and incorporated some of his philosophies into my writing. If we’re going to survive and thrive in times of tumult we will need to rethink everything. Find a way to join the new with the old. I see Will Allen’s work as pioneering in that regard.

Now a New York Times bestselling author, Michael Perry currently resides in rural Wisconsin where he serves on the local volunteer fire and rescue service while also intermittently pig farming. He is also the host of “Tent Show Radio,” a weekly variety series, and often performs as a humorist when not on tour with his band, the Long Beds. Perry is a contributor to our March, 2017 “Chef Issue,” writing this month’s Perspective, “A Cheesehead Ripens.”